Twenty-two striking magic posters, including items representing Houdini, Kellar, Thurston, Dunninger, Albini, Ovette, and Rouclere, among others, have been treated by conservators at The New York Public Library, and sixteen of them have been made accessible in the Library’s free Digital Collections web site.
 Harry Houdini poster, circa 1900. Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts (used with permission). |  The Incomparable Albini poster, Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts (used with permission). |
The posters were printed from 1894 through about 1920. Because of their age and their storage in an unstable scrapbook in which they had been pasted, the posters had been subject to deterioration. Now the conserved and restored items can be viewed globally via the web or seen in person at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center where they are part of the Billy Rose Theater Division. The treatment of the posters was funded by Kathy and Alan Greenberg. Alan Greenberg, who died this past July was a longtime board member of The New York Public Library and a passionate fan and performer of magic. The posters were added to the Library's Digital Collections site in September.
According to magic historian Gabe Fajuri, President of Potter and Potter, an auction house specializing in magic, the collection includes “four or five which are particulary uncommon or scarce and one or two which are rare and maybe unique.” He points to a stylized red Houdini poster, heralding the escape artist as “Europe’s Eclipsing Sensation.” “I have not seen that elsewhere, ever.” says Fajuri. Another poster features a striking illustration of Houdini crouched over, bound in manacles around his wrists and ankles, dressed only in skimpy red, white, and blue shorts with gold fringe. “Certainly the Houdini in chains is one of two or one of very few and that’s the best poster of the bunch for a lot of reasons,” says Fajuri. The collection includes a third Houdini poster which has not yet been digitized and which also is quite rare according to Fajuri. It shows a fanciful illustration of Houdini in a tuxedo elevated over a barrel, inside of a prison cell. Houdini is surrounded by devil and angel characters and the poster promotes “Houdini’s Prison Cell & Barrel Mystery.” [Story continues on next page]
According to magic historian Gabe Fajuri, President of Potter and Potter, an auction house specializing in magic, the collection includes “four or five which are particulary uncommon or scarce and one or two which are rare and maybe unique.” He points to a stylized red Houdini poster, heralding the escape artist as “Europe’s Eclipsing Sensation.” “I have not seen that elsewhere, ever.” says Fajuri. Another poster features a striking illustration of Houdini crouched over, bound in manacles around his wrists and ankles, dressed only in skimpy red, white, and blue shorts with gold fringe. “Certainly the Houdini in chains is one of two or one of very few and that’s the best poster of the bunch for a lot of reasons,” says Fajuri. The collection includes a third Houdini poster which has not yet been digitized and which also is quite rare according to Fajuri. It shows a fanciful illustration of Houdini in a tuxedo elevated over a barrel, inside of a prison cell. Houdini is surrounded by devil and angel characters and the poster promotes “Houdini’s Prison Cell & Barrel Mystery.” [Story continues on next page]
 Harry Houdini poster, circa 1900, Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts (used with permission). |  Dunninger poster, 1913 or 1914, Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts (used with permission). |
Fajuri points to interesting historical perspectives provided by some of the other posters. For example, there are two bold all-type pieces promoting Joseph Dunninger from 1913 or 1914. “The Dunninger posters are interesting from the standpoint that they were for his appearances at the Eden Musee in New York. It’s really where he first made his mark as an entertainer. You’ll notice that he’s billed as ‘The Master Illusionist and one of the world’s greatest conjurors ever known.’ Of course Dunninger became famous as a mind reader and mentalist and these are for when he was doing an illusion show."
 Hill Magical Company, circa 1916 to 1919, Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts (used with permission). |  Thurston, the Indian Rope Trick poster, 1910, Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts (used with permission). |
The collection also includes some stylish generic posters on which magicians would imprint their own information. One such poster featuring the banner of The Hill Magical Company provides historical perspective as to the acts in a typical bill, including “The Two Ettevilos, Comic Necromancers; and Magical Ovette, The Invincible; supported by Madam Svengali and Ivanoff.” “The Two Ettevillos is probably just a version of Ovette’s name spelled backward,” says Fajuri. "He worked with his wife, and for all we know the Hill Magical Company was Ovette as well. It’s hard to say who all those performers were, but my gut is it’s all the same people.” The venue for this particular bill was a YMCA, and since Ovette is known to have performed under the auspices of that organization from 1916 to 1919, it is likely that the poster is from that time frame.
Annemarie van Roessel, Assistant Curator of the Library’s Billy Rose Theatre Division suggests the posters also will be of interest for insight into subjects other than magic. “The posters are important not just in terms of documenting these wonderful magicians and their acts, but also in terms of commercial art and graphic design. The idea of promotion is certainly a critical aspect of performance and these posters do a magnificent job of conveying that message, often in a very narrative way. In addition to magic historians, there are art and popular culture historians who are studying the artists and lithographic companies who created these works. . . .They also provide important context to the books and papers of these magicians elsewhere in our collection--and in collections held by other institutions and private collectors."
Although the original collector of the posters must have thought that glueing them into a scrapbook was the best way to save them, in fact it ultimately caused the problems encountered today and made the process of preserving them very challenging. “They were pasted front to back on each page of this scrapbook,” said Grace Owen-Weiss, the Library Conservator who oversaw the treatment of the posters. “And because it was made of very poor quality material to begin with it had deteriorated over the years….the scrapbook pages were crumbling, causing fracturing, tearing, crumbling of the magic posters attached to them.” Most of the posters were pasted across the spread of two scrapbook pages meaning they were folded when the book was closed. “The way they were in the book, to get a complete poster was sometimes very difficult.,” Owen-Weiss continues. “If you would bathe some of the leaves to remove one poster entirely, you would get two halves of two other posters. So it was very complicated.”
Annemarie van Roessel, Assistant Curator of the Library’s Billy Rose Theatre Division suggests the posters also will be of interest for insight into subjects other than magic. “The posters are important not just in terms of documenting these wonderful magicians and their acts, but also in terms of commercial art and graphic design. The idea of promotion is certainly a critical aspect of performance and these posters do a magnificent job of conveying that message, often in a very narrative way. In addition to magic historians, there are art and popular culture historians who are studying the artists and lithographic companies who created these works. . . .They also provide important context to the books and papers of these magicians elsewhere in our collection--and in collections held by other institutions and private collectors."
Although the original collector of the posters must have thought that glueing them into a scrapbook was the best way to save them, in fact it ultimately caused the problems encountered today and made the process of preserving them very challenging. “They were pasted front to back on each page of this scrapbook,” said Grace Owen-Weiss, the Library Conservator who oversaw the treatment of the posters. “And because it was made of very poor quality material to begin with it had deteriorated over the years….the scrapbook pages were crumbling, causing fracturing, tearing, crumbling of the magic posters attached to them.” Most of the posters were pasted across the spread of two scrapbook pages meaning they were folded when the book was closed. “The way they were in the book, to get a complete poster was sometimes very difficult.,” Owen-Weiss continues. “If you would bathe some of the leaves to remove one poster entirely, you would get two halves of two other posters. So it was very complicated.”
 Laurant, the Celebrated Magician, poster, circa 1900, Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts (used with permission). |  The Great Rouclere poster, circa 1890 to 1910, Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts (used with permission). |
The posters were conserved in the Library’s Barbara Goldsmith Conservation Lab, in Long Island City. They were first surface-cleaned before they were bathed in order to remove them from the scrapbook pages and also neutralize the acidity of the paper. After they were dried, they were lined with Japanese tissue, which provides stability to the poster. Once lined, the posters were kept under pressure over a period of weeks.
The Conservators also had to grapple with how to deal with missing areas. “This is a tricky thing to do,” said Owen-Weiss, “Because we are conservators and not restorers, there are all sorts of ethical considerations. Owen-Weiss noticed that the chomolithographic printing process created a particular ink pattern. “So I started playing with air brushes to get that speckled pattern and the layering of color to kind of simulate the pattern of the lost areas without actually replicating them. Your eye will blend it all in if you’re two or three feet away, but if you are up close you can see where I have mended. That is what a conservator ethically wants to do. We don’t really ever want to cosmetically mask, to try and fool you into thinking that it was never damaged. You should be able to see that it was damaged but repaired.”
The Library’s collections contain numerous scrapbooks with unique or otherwise rare materials documenting magic history. The poster scrapbook, according to Owen-Weiss, bears a stamp of the Society for American Magicians. The Library had a close connection with Saram Ellison, a founder of the S. A. M. who donated numerous other important scrapbooks from around the same time period, and it is possible that he helped arrange for the donation of this volume to the Library. Additional posters from the scrapbook are stored in acid-free and climate controlled conditions by the Library with the potential they could be restored in the future.
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The Conservators also had to grapple with how to deal with missing areas. “This is a tricky thing to do,” said Owen-Weiss, “Because we are conservators and not restorers, there are all sorts of ethical considerations. Owen-Weiss noticed that the chomolithographic printing process created a particular ink pattern. “So I started playing with air brushes to get that speckled pattern and the layering of color to kind of simulate the pattern of the lost areas without actually replicating them. Your eye will blend it all in if you’re two or three feet away, but if you are up close you can see where I have mended. That is what a conservator ethically wants to do. We don’t really ever want to cosmetically mask, to try and fool you into thinking that it was never damaged. You should be able to see that it was damaged but repaired.”
The Library’s collections contain numerous scrapbooks with unique or otherwise rare materials documenting magic history. The poster scrapbook, according to Owen-Weiss, bears a stamp of the Society for American Magicians. The Library had a close connection with Saram Ellison, a founder of the S. A. M. who donated numerous other important scrapbooks from around the same time period, and it is possible that he helped arrange for the donation of this volume to the Library. Additional posters from the scrapbook are stored in acid-free and climate controlled conditions by the Library with the potential they could be restored in the future.
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